This Storm

by James Ellroy

  The Wolf jumped on the bed. Constanza sat on the edge. She took his hands. Her voice was soft.

  I journeyed up to love you and assuage your fear. It is all hearsay. It’s a smear tactic employed by my brother, allied with Meyer Gelb. They are creating dissension among the Kameraden, because they fear you so. They possess the gold or know where it is. They fear that we will take it from them. We ourselves will live in fear as long as my brother remains alive.

  I cannot believe that Salvy would betray me. You were his lover. Please refute the assertion and tell me that it isn’t true.

  You collect acolytes and younger brothers. It is not a trait I admire in you.

  Harsh you. Your stern words wound me.

  You have never been wounded as I have. Consider the horror my brother inflicted, as you permit him to draw breath.

  You were approached and offered the minutes for the Baja conference. Has a sum been mentioned? Was the approach credible?

  The approach was tendered through my mail drop in Los Angeles. The note was block-printed with a ruler, which bespeaks spycraft to me. The sender failed to explain himself further. The sum mentioned was ten thousand dollars.

  120

  KAY LAKE’S DIARY

  (LOS ANGELES, 1:00 P.M., 4/5/42)

  Chez Lux. Health retreat, dry-out farm, divorce hideaway. Sid Hudgens has dubbed it the “Nose Job Notre Dame.” Jack Horrall and Gene Biscailuz boil the booze out under Terry’s supervision. Fritz Eckelkamp was cut into Meyer Gelb here. The guest bungalows are enclosed by high hedgerows and pepper trees. The medical buildings resemble a Bauhaus college campus. There are tennis courts, putting greens, a first-run movie house. Noted comrades skulk in residence. Saul Lesnick, Two-Gun Davis. Lin Chung concocts eugenics potions in Terry’s lab. Orson Welles will soon engage Terry’s weight-loss regime. Steam baths and cocaine do the trick.

  Claire and I sipped coffee on her terrace. Our own comrades were otherwise deployed. Buzz was chasing Meyer Gelb; Elmer was chasing J-town leads in the wake of the Bev’s Switchboard raid. Bill assigned my own Lee Blanchard to bodyguard Sid Hudgens. The mock scandal sheet had been widely received; the Sidster feared Dudster reprisals.

  The setting was lovely. Claire and I sat side by side; Claire kept a hand on my knee. It was companionable, more than seductive. Ten years separated us; the war enthused us equally; my enthusiasm was girlish and ghoulish when compared to hers. Claire saw the war as the culmination of her long leftist immersion. The current worldwide horror was the horror of her failed attempts to spark revolution. She failed to grasp the horror of her own profligacy and could not acknowledge its self-perpetuation. She viewed her personal life and the war as one inextricable struggle. I viewed my personal life and the war as an opportunity. I put my hand on Claire’s hand on my knee. I thought of Edna St. Vincent Millay as I did this. “Through my mother’s hand. / I saw the web grow, / And the pattern expand.”

  Claire said, “I’m not going to issue a false confession to Monsignor Hayes. I’ve read your script a dozen times, and I’ve decided that I cannot and will not do it. I called Captain Parker this morning. We discussed the matter, and he told me that he has arrived at the same resolve. He said the monsignor has consented to a formal police interview. Your scandal mock-up must have frightened him, dear.”

  I squeezed Claire’s hand. “You called Bill Parker. I must say I’ve heard everything now.”

  “God despises half-assed apostates. I can’t justify that scripturally, but I know it to be true.”

  We lit cigarettes and blew smoke at the sky. The retreat caught sea breezes; cloud patterns expanded and swirled. I released my enclosing hand and let it fall free; Claire laced up our fingers.

  “I did something you should know about.”

  “Yes?”

  “It began back in Ensenada. It was shortly after I realized that Dudley had become involved with the Lazaro-Schmidt woman. I heard them talking on the phone, and eavesdropped. He was discussing a Nazi-Soviet conference with this creature, and I picked up quite a few details. The conference occurred in Ensenada, in the fall of ’40. Dudley said he’d pay dearly to acquire any typed minutes that might exist.”

  I squeezed Claire’s hand. “I know about that conference,” I said. “It was all over Joan’s diary.”

  Claire placed my hand on her knee. Mature woman, young woman. Edna St. Vincent Millay and early-wartime flirtation. Pinch me—I’m a South Dakota farm girl.

  “I did something precipitous, Katherine. I recalled what you told me about Bev’s Switchboard and mail drops, and I ruler-printed a note to the Lazaro-Schmidt woman. I told her I had the minutes, and I’d be willing to sell them to her for ten thousand dollars.”

  Claire, the bold apostate. Claire, the vengeful lover. Precipitous, indeed.

  “Did you tell her where to contact you?”

  “No. I wrote that I’d contact her again.”

  I said, “We can’t overdo it here. We sent your letter to Dudley, as well as the scandal sheet. I was going to send notes from Beth Short and Joan Klein, but it may be altogether too much, and alert him.”

  Claire smiled. “I should mention that Joan has moved into Otto’s guesthouse. She’s become a yet-younger version of your still-young version of Mata Hari. If the Shostakovich symphony ever arrives in this country, it will be due to that rather outré child’s efforts.”

  Jean Staley vacates the guesthouse; Young Joan Klein moves in. Otto Klemperer’s Home for Wayward Women.

  “Otto told me a horrible story, Claire. It goes back to the time of his blackouts, and it has the feel of a blackout itself. A man was making ‘vile comments’ to him, and he beat the man to death. He told Saul Lesnick about it. Lesnick and Ed Satterlee exploited the situation and hushed it up. Otto paid them a good deal of money, of course.”

  Claire said, “Otto killed no one, dear. Saul was drunk one night, and explained it all to me. The man was Japanese. He sold rather horrific curios, and he rented a few items to Orson Welles, to use as props in a smut film he was making—one that I appeared in, as a lark. The film was debuted at what I’ve been told was a rather decadent party at Otto’s house, while Otto was here at Terry’s place, taking a rest cure. Otto met the Japanese man at some point after that party. He beat the man, but not badly. He was insensate from the pain medicine that Saul had prescribed, and convinced himself that he’d committed murder. Saul and Ed Satterlee were more than willing to exploit this addled belief.”

  * * *

  —

  The drive to Manzanar consumed eight full hours. I journeyed from springtime Los Angeles to a bleak outpost of the California Sierras. Bill secured me a visitor’s pass and warned me that an MP lieutenant named Al Wilhite was a Dudley Smith toady and had likely been assigned to watchdog Hideo Ashida.

  Hideo was expecting me. Bill called him on his scrambler phone and arranged the rendezvous. Dudley might well learn of it; I didn’t care; my visit was contrived to place Hideo in a state of moral jeopardy from which he could not run.

  I drove into snow country; the temperature dropped at dusk; mountain winds slammed my car as icy blacktop skewed the traction. I concentrated on driving and nothing else. I learned to drive on winter prairie roads; this was more of that; I hit a flat plane right before Manzanar and slalomed just as I did in rural South Dakota.

  Road signs announced the camp; I saw perimeter lights a half mile ahead and slid the last hundred yards up to the gate. I saw cabin rows, bisecting paths, barbed wire, and pivoting floodlights. The gate guard issued me a parking pass and gave me directions to the canteen. Visiting hours were over, he said. But they made exceptions for Dr. Ashida—he was a star boarder here.

  I could have visited Hideo in the plush suite that Dudley had secured for him—but Hideo nixed that idea. He knew I was coming to further recruit and suborn him. He wanted me to feel ill at ease within
a public context of his own people.

  I parked and began my trek uphill. Mountain gusts pushed me forward, back, from side to side. The canteen was three paths up and three paths over. I trudged a good mile and a half; the family huts stretched just that far and wide. They were dimly lit and shuttered; no faces peered out at anomalous me.

  I found the canteen. It was dim bulb–lit and hung with frayed Japanese lanterns. The interior walls were rough pine-planked and joined at severe right angles. One small room, rough wood furniture, wall photographs of majestic Mount Fuji.

  Hideo sat off by himself. Four older men sat in a group. The canteen was a Japanese bachelors’ club, prison camp–style.

  I sat down across from Hideo. He said, “No outrage, please. It’s spartan, but it’s not the Warsaw Ghetto or the Lubyanka.”

  He’d lost weight. He wore gray flannels and a brown anorak. He warmed his hands on a thermos and poured me a cup of hot tea.

  I took off my gloves and sipped at it. I played cutup and waved to the old men; they looked down and made me feel like a farceur and wretch. Hideo said, “At least you tried. I’d have thought you’d become someone else if you hadn’t.”

  I smiled. “I subjected you to that wiretap,” I said. “You’re subjecting me to your fellow bachelors and this spartan accommodation.”

  “You didn’t subject me to anything I didn’t already know about Dudley. You tend to overplay your hand, Kay. Your subtext was ‘he’s finished,’ but I’m not sure I agree with that.”

  Touché, Hideo. We’re here to bargain, and I know you’ll set boundaries. You fear implacable women. I know that about you.

  “I spoke to Claire today. She told me Otto Klemperer crossed paths with our Japanese sword man. It confirms his presence in our suspect pool.”

  Hideo said, “I consider him tangential. The homosexual youth may or may not be an actual suspect. Kyoho Hanamaka placed him with a white woman, about thirty. It confirms my key thesis. Without actual names and evidence, these confirmations are no more than supposition.”

  I said, “You’re a killjoy. You’re like those old men over there.”

  “Since you’re fishing for compliments, I’ll provide one. Your epistolary approach is inspired. You surely got Dudley’s attention with the scandal sheet, but I wish you hadn’t sent it to the Staties.”

  “It lured Monsignor Hayes. He’s coming in, with a lawyer. Bill’s set to interview him.”

  Hideo sighed and stomped one foot. He was impatient. Tell me what you expect of me. You’re a woman. I’m bored already.

  “Tell me what you want. I’ll say yes or no immediately.”

  “I want you to forge a document. Minutes for the Baja conference in ’40.”

  “To be sent to whom, and under what cover?”

  “Constanza Lazaro-Schmidt,” I said. “It should be crafted to induce greed for the gold, and I want it sent anonymously.”

  Hideo drummed the table. “Quid pro quo? There’s two specific concessions I require.”

  I said, “Tell me what you want. I’ll say yes or no immediately.”

  The riposte sailed right by him. He said, “I want to conduct the interviews with Leander Frechette and Martin Luther Mimms.”

  “And, second?”

  “I do not want Dudley Smith harmed. You may expose him and seek to contravene his designs. You may not kill him, physically harm him, or seek to imprison him. Tell your vindictive lover Bill Parker that. Tell your volatile friend Elmer Jackson that. Tell the trigger-happy Buzz Meeks that. All four of you must know that I will not permit Dudley Smith to be harmed in those specific fashions.”

  Touché. You trumped me. This girl knows when she’s ceded the high ground, and when she’s licked.

  “I’ve never seen you this passionate.”

  Hideo said, “I love him. He gave me the world, and it was not an insignificant gift.”

  121

  (LONE PINE, 10:00 A.M., 4/6/42)

  You’re a Jap.

  The main drag bustled. The spring thaw hit all at once. It engendered foot traffic. Folks stormed the grocery store and the hardware store. Who’s that big goon cuffed to that Jap?

  The goon wore civvies. He was an MP PFC. Ashida wore civvies. The cuff chain dangled in plain sight.

  You’re a Jap.

  Folks saw them. Folks passed comment. It was snide but civilized. Manzanar was close by. It juiced local business. The war had its upside. Why’s this Jap on the loose?

  Because he’s Manzanar’s star boarder. Because he’s out shopping. Because he’s buying forgery gear.

  The MP mapped the excursion. They hit a stationery store and a bookstore. It created a mild upscut. Biz was biz, though.

  Ashida purchased four reams of quality bond paper and four fountain pens. He bought corresponding bottles of ink and German- and Russian-language study texts.

  They hit the hardware store. Ashida bought a rubber-stamp kit and three hobbyist’s knives. Ranch locals cruised him. He bought a bottle of gum arabic. A ranch boy sidled close. He pulled his eyes into Jap slits and giggled. The MP moved him along.

  * * *

  —

  His lab was well stocked and equipped. All praise to you know who. The shopping jaunt bypassed Al Wilhite. Subterfuge and spycraft. He slid the MP fifty scoots and made him pledge silence. You know who taught him well.

  Ashida skimmed the usage books. He gained German and Russian vocabulary and enhanced his syntactical grasp. He was Spanish-fluent. He possessed one typewriter. It was a ’36 Underwood. Verisimilitude. The concept buttressed his Baja ’40 construction.

  The minutes were composed and typed at the conference. The German and Russian factions shared this one machine. It was a late-vintage U.S. import. Verisimilitude. Staff flunkies typed in Ensenada hotel rooms. It was a rush job. Be sure to flub and overscore words.

  Ashida composed at his desk. He typed off his hand-scrawled notes. He kept the German text lofty and ambiguous. The Kameraden fear committed words on paper. The Russian comrades are less circumspect.

  Man Camera. Time Machine. Spring ’42 as the fall of ’40. Retrospective verisimilitude. You must express ridicule and contempt. It must wound Dudley Smith in the present tense.

  Ashida assumed a Russian voice. He’s a high-up apparatchik. He castigates the Dresden Poly boys. Díaz, Jamie, Hayes, Pimentel. They are all rightist refuseniks and deviationists. They cannot comprehend the grand ideal of left-right amity.

  Ashida played a hunch. He recalled Joan’s diary. She described a tract sent to the klubhaus. Salvy Abascal wrote it. The tract critiqued the Baja conference and the postwar utopian dream promulgated there. The tract suggested Abascal’s presence at the confab. Call him a right-wing stooge at the prom and no more.

  Here’s the hunch. He cruised through Dresden Poly. He knew the boys there. He withheld this from Dudley. He’s a longtime outlier in the left-right cabal.

  That’s the hunch. Here’s the fictive reinterpretation.

  Abascal is no more than a stooge racketeer. He’s out to grab the gold for himself. The apparatchik has heard rumors. Abascal’s militant Catholic stance is a ruse. He’s a Brit-loving monarchist. The Irish are subhuman pigs.

  Salvador has hoodwinked Dudley. That’s confirmed evidence now. It should be retroactively advanced. The apparatchik should express it. Abascal’s goal has always been racket appropriation. He’s been looking for a U.S. sugar daddy. His goal foreshadows this:

  He found his sugar daddy. Dudley Smith’s muddleheaded when it comes to wild young men. Exploit the Dudley-Salvador fissure. Render it a chasm. Grant Meyer Gelb retrospective Führer status.

  Ashida wrote Russian text. The apparatchik defamed Salvador at great length. Meyer Gelb was conversely lauded. Ashida overscored and flubbed words deliberately. The German and Russian texts stood complete. He forged varying
ink signatures.

  The textual work took eight hours. He aged his paper next. He boiled a hydroxide solution and laced it with tap water. He filled an atomizer and sprayed his pages. He fan-dried them. It created a frayed yellow effect. He repeated the process four times. Verisimilitude. Quadruple-aged paper. He worked through the night and into the next day.

  He built the stamp. He devised one symbol for one cause united. He cut rubber and sawed wood and glued ink pads tight. He worked through that next day. He forgot to eat.

  Die Fahne hoch!!! Beastly ideology, one savage beast. He’s half Nazi eagle, half Russian bear. He’s a lumbering creature with wings. His claws drip blood. His contorted beak screams. Crossed hammers offset the swastika. The four points are sharp workers’ scythes.

  122

  (LOS ANGELES, 4:00 P.M., 4/7/42)

  Papal slugfest. Bill Parker versus Padre Joe Hayes and some dioscean shyster.

  They hogged a DB sweatbox. Parker wore civvies. Hayes wore his penguin suit. The lawyer wore a blue blazer with a Loyola crest. Elmer peeped the see-thru. He goosed the hall speaker up high.

  Parker and Hayes indulged blah-blah. Elmer tuned it out. He gassed with Kay yesterday. She passed on Hideo’s report. Kyoho Hanamaka was dead now. He supplied good drift, premortem.

  It confirmed the Jap sword man and the queer white boy. The white boy had a white girl pal. Archie Archuleta peddled the sword man’s trinkets. Jean Staley masterminded the mail-order biz. Fruit brother Robby helped out.

  Padre Hayes told stale jokes. The prelude protracted. Elmer brain-revved. The sword man had to be Johnny Shinura. That Bev’s Switchboard catalogue spelled it out plain. Shinura had no green sheet. Shinura was uninterned and out on the hoof. Shinura peddled his shit out of a J-town loft. The Feds seized the building a month ago. It was government-sealed. Where’s Sword Man Johnny now?